t and instructiveness to the enthusiastic
friendship subsisting between him and his daughter. It is no disproof
of the need of the great virtues to serve as the basis of a true and
enduring friendship. It proves that a sincere love, even in an
unclean and depraved soul, purges it, and adorns it with meritorious
charms and real worth in that relation. However bad Burr may have
been in other relations, to his daughter he was ever good, gentle,
and wise, unwearied in his devotion, and clothed with many
fascinations. Good persons may sometimes be ill-consorted and odious
to each other, their intercourse full of jars and frictions. Bad
persons may sometimes be so related as to show each other only their
good qualities, and be happy friends, while all around are detesting
them. In one of her letters to her father, Theodosia speaks of his
wonderful fortitude, and goes on to say, "Often, after reflecting on
this subject, you appear to me so elevated above all other men; I
contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility, admiration,
reverence, love, and pride, that very little superstition would be
necessary to make me worship you as a superior being; such enthusiasm
does your character excite in me. When I afterward revert to myself,
how insignificant do my best qualities appear! My vanity would be
greater, if I had not been placed so near you; and yet my pride is in
our relationship. I had rather not live than not be the daughter of
such a man." Burr, on the evening before his duel with Hamilton,
wrote to his daughter a long letter, in which he said, "I am indebted
to you, my dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the
happiness which I have enjoyed in this life. You have completely
satisfied all that my heart and affections had hoped, or even
wished." Unhappily he slew his antagonist, and himself survived to
carry a load of deadly and universal obloquy which would have crushed
to the earth almost any other man.

Theodosia set sail from Charleston in a little vessel, which was
never heard of again. It was supposed to have foundered off Cape
Hatteras. The loss of his daughter, Burr said, "severed him from the
human race." Certainly, from that time to the end of his prolonged
and dishonored life, he never was wholly what he had been before. An
inner spring had been broken, and the purest contents of his heart
had escaped through the breach. Parton very fitly dedicates to the
memory of Theodosia his highly readabl